Hoegaarden Wit-Blanche: A surprising bottle of sunshine

When I was looking for the first beer to review, I was faced with a refrigerator full of options. There's the imperial stout, the six-month-old Belgian farmhouse brew, a handful of New Belgium brews and something with chilies in it.

But the one that stood out for me most was, as the title suggests, the Hoegaarden Belgian Wheat Beer. Why? Three reasons:

1. It's pretty widely available in Sterling and around the country (not true of all Colorado brews),

2. Not many people seem to know about it, and

3. It tastes like a glorious spring day without even trying.

To be honest, I was also a little surprised, too. I don't know much about the intricacies of beer, but I know that sunlight is a beer's worst enemy (Corona doesn't count), and that this beer was shipped from Belgium in a bottle that isn't quite as dark as it should be. There's a lot of room for error.

But at the first pour, it's easy to tell that the beer is a notch up from a mainstream lager. Even if it tastes like warm hose water, it at least looks okay. The beer pours a slightly hazy haystack yellow, with a thick white head that sticks around for awhile. It has a pretty pronounced smell of spiced oranges or lemons, if that's a thing, which will wake you up a little bit.

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Where the beer really shocked me, though, was in the taste. It's light with a slight taste of citrus throughout, with the classic wheat taste one might get from a New Belgium Sunshine Wheat. There's no bitterness, and no nasty palate-sticking tastes to cling in your mouth and ruin whatever spring grilling food you might be grilling. That being said, this beer would pair well with a fruit salad more than it would a full rack of baby back ribs.

Overall, Hoegaarden gets an 88. It won't knock the boots off of any beer snobs, but it's light, refreshing, and perfect for kicking back on a warm, sunny day. It might not be a Colorado brew, but it's so crisp, it might as well have been pulled out of a backyard spring. Definitely worth a try.

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